The Breaking News Consumer's Handbook

This week saw another breaking news event, the DC Navy Yard shooting, misreported by the press. Usually, we take time to point out how the media got it wrong and how they can do better next time. But this week we've decided to bring you a list of best practices that will help you, the media consumer, weed out bad information the next time an event like this takes place.

You can see our print version of the Breaking News Consumer's Handbook by following this link, or you can print it out as a PDF the next time there's a breaking news event.

John Zorn - Prelude 3: Prelude of Light

Transcript

MAN: Someone dressed in a black top, black jeans, what does that say, if anything, about a possible motive or, or whatever? Can we begin to draw any initial conclusions? And I want to alert our viewers, sometimes these initial conclusions can, obviously, be very, very wrong.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: The initial coverage of the mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard Monday by contractor Aaron Alexis bore all the earmarks of classic reportage in the midst of these all too frequent horrors. It stunk.

CORRESPONDENT: It’s believed that whoever this gunman is, a man in his fifties who – is carrying three weapons, a handgun, a shotgun and an assault rifle.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Wrong about his age, wrong about the assault rifle.

CORRESPONDENT: Earlier today, some media outlets were tweeting out that the shooter was a named Raleigh Chance.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now, that is dangerously wrong. Breaking news, whether of a violent storm or a vicious gunman, creates chaos and confusion. That’s a given. But what the news media do in the face of it, that’s a choice. And they pretty much make the same choice in every medium, on every platform, in every era.CORRESPONDENT: Rumors ran rampant. At first step it was thought that Vice President Johnson had also been shot in the attack.

REBECCA GREENFIELD: During the JFK assassination, if you listened to the radio broadcasts, they sound as uncertain as Twitter reporters sound, when they’re reporting if he’s alive, if he’s dead.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Rebecca Greenfield writes for The Atlantic Wire.

REBECCA GREENFIELD: A reporter in Dallas goes back and forth on it. At one point, they report that there were three shooters there. It goes all the way back to the reporting of the Titanic, even. There were false telegraphs saying that the Titanic hadn’t sunk and that it was on its way to Halifax safe.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: The new media environment means everyone gets to report or disseminate news of disaster. Some report well, some badly, but all are retweeted. So listen up, some of this is on you.

ANDY CARVIN: When a breaking news situation is happening, you really should pay attention to certain keywords that members of the media may use, because they mean very distinct things.

ANDY CARVIN: So, for example, if they say, we're receiving reports that XYZ has happened, that should suggest to you that some of their sources are claiming something but it's not necessarily confirmed, whereas if they then say, we can confirm that such and such has happened, that means that they feel that their sourcing is strong enough that they can go out on a limb and claim that this is an actual fact. And there are all sorts of words that they may use in between, such as, “It appears that such and such has happened,” so they’re feeling somewhat confident but they still haven’t necessarily confirmed it either.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What about, “CNN has learned”?

ANDY CARVIN: One of the things that you will sometimes hear during breaking news is the phrase, “CNN has learned” or “”NPR has learned.” While it may not seem like a big deal, it’s their way of saying we have some sort of scoop. So, on the one hand, it could mean that they do have a scoop and they’re the first ones to confirm something, or they’re going out on a limb and reporting something that no one else has felt comfortable reporting yet.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: A shooting where NPR got it initially wrong was reporting that Congressperson Gabby Giffords had died.

[CLIP]:

NPR SPOKESWOMAN: In a fast-changing news situation, with conflicting reports, we should have been more cautious. NPR news apologizes to the family of Representative Giffords and to you, our listeners.

[END CLIP]

ANDY CARVIN: Which is why it's also important to listen to whether or not they're claiming what the source is. So, for example, if they say, “We’re receiving information from law enforcement sources or law enforcement officials,” if they’re not going on record with that law enforcement official’s name, then it’s still essentially speculation, whereas if they say, “Officer such and such, at a press conference five minutes ago, said XYZ,” that means the officials have gone on the record with their names and the information that they have.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Unnamed sources led CNN up the path to

perdition, by wrongly claiming a suspect had been apprehended in the Boston Marathon bombing. And unnamed officials wrongly fingered Ryan Lanza, the actual shooter's brother as the gunman at Sandy Hook. But named officials maligned the citizens of New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. In the first hours of mayhem coverage, trust no one. News consumers longing for certainty should just learn to live with the pain. As Carvin says, mark our words, meaning the media's words, and learn from experience, even if we don't.

IAN FISHER: First off, they should be wary about names that come out because often shooters are using different IDs or often the law enforcement officials are wrong.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Ian Fisher is Assistant Managing Editor for Digital Operations at the New York Times.

IAN FISHER: Be wary of organizations that blindly quote other organizations, without solid sourcing. They aren’t taking a very big chance in doing that. They can always say, oh, that was them, not us. Another thing is there’s almost never a second gunman.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: It's like House on the TV show, saying, “It’s never lupus.”

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Craig Silverman, author of the Poynter Institute’s Regret the Error blog, has just written a piece which he plans to run every time there's a crisis. It's called, “This is My Story About the Breaking News Errors That Just Happened.”

CRAIG SILVERMAN: And it just basically will fit pretty much any breaking news error situation in the future.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Okay, so what happens every single time?

CRAIG SILVERMAN: So, misidentification of people, usually of victims, of perpetrators - very consistent. We’ll often see mistaken numbers, in terms of the number of victims, in terms of the number of perpetrators and that kind of thing, as well. Sometimes location is incorrect, where something originated, where something is happening now, mistakes also related to images, so fake images that are portrayed as real or images that were taken previously and sort of find their way to be presented as if they’re new. So that's very consistent, as well.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: As you know, big news brings out the fakers.

CRAIG SILVERMAN: Absolutely. And this is a really important thing for both journalists and for people consuming media in these moments to realize, is that there are lots of hoaxers who know that in this moment people are just grabbing onto whatever image they can find. So they might Photoshop something and send it out. What we commonly see in, [LAUGHS] in weather situations is now what I call the street shark -

[BROOKE LAUGHS]

- where people – people will claim to see, in a flooded street or highway, a shark swimming.

[BROOKE LAUGHS]

So beware of street sharks.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So who should we trust?

CRAIG SILVERMAN: Well, [LAUGHS] a little bit of no one and a little bit of everyone. People on the ground, that’s always your preferred source. Can - have they actually seen it with their own eyes, are they actually there and do they know the area - really, really important.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: But not guaranteed. I'm tempted now to play another montage here, of bad reporting of the Boston Marathon bombing, the Sandy Hook shooting, the Oregon mall shooting, the Aurora, Colorado shooting, the Virginia Tech shooting and Columbine.

[MUSIC UP AND UNDER]

But I won't, because the exercise would be more depressing than illustrative. Instead, we’ll put a chart on our website to post by your TV or radio or computer, to consult, when next confronted with a blood-saturated lead, because innocent people are shattered by guns but also by the buckshot of frenzied media, social media, included. Take note of the words: “We’re receiving reports, an unnamed official says, another news outlet reports, experts speculate,” and, of course, “second gunman.” Mostly, they’re just buckets of blather deployed to fill that aching void. So print out our little chart. And may you never need it. But you will.

About On The Media

WNYC’s weekly investigation into how the media shapes our world view. Veteran journalists Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield give you the tools to survive the media maelstrom.

WNYC 93.9 FM and AM 820 are New York's flagship public radio
stations, broadcasting the finest programs from NPR, PRI and American Public Media, as well as a wide range of award-winning local
programming. WNYC is a division of
New York Public Radio.